


No One Volunteers for This

by sheffiesharpe



Series: At Least There's The Football [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Anthea is totally a ninja, Coming Out, Gratuitous Harry Potter References, Greg Lestrade has two nieces and is good at football, Greg Lestrade is secretly punk rock, M/M, backwards but not in heels, even the government likes hoodies, family photo albums, your boyfriend's probably a Slytherin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-20
Updated: 2011-09-20
Packaged: 2017-10-23 21:37:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/255266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheffiesharpe/pseuds/sheffiesharpe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mycroft and Lestrade finally have a number of important conversations, a photo album is viewed, and everything is backwards, but that’s all right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No One Volunteers for This

While the shower runs, Lestrade cleans up in the kitchen, makes himself another espresso because the coffee’s really good and he can’t help himself. He tries not to pay too much attention to how long Mycroft’s behind the door, but when the shower stops, he might walk by a few times to check for anything that sounds like hyperventilating. Will had actually had to get a paper bag for a bloke once, a bloke who’d just left his wife, apparently, which he’d conveniently left out of the initial pick-up. Lestrade is pretty certain he doesn’t have to worry about Mycroft freaking out because they’re both men; it seems a lot more like Mycroft freaking out—quietly, rather calmly, and with a lot of aplomb—at the fact that he’s with anyone at all. Luckily, Lestrade hears nothing that sounds like hyperventilating, though he does hear a hair-dryer. He’s not sure why he finds that so unbearably dear, but he does. He goes back to the kitchen, makes himself not hover beside the door. When he hears the washroom door open, he starts the tea steeping.

Mycroft is still in the bedroom when his tea is ready. Lestrade strains the leaves from it, carries it back the hall. He doesn’t mean to do it, means to give the man some space, but he wants to look at him again, wants to be sure he’s all right.

He taps on the door twice before he ducks in. “Tea,” he says, and he puts the cup and saucer on the dresser. Mycroft is behind the paper screen, his robe hanging from its corner.

There’s a clothy sound, and then Mycroft peeks around the screen. “Thank you,” he says. The way he leans bares the tiniest bit of shoulder before he disappears again. Lestrade considers begging.

What he does say is, “As your boyfriend, do I have power to veto you wearing something that buttons at the wrist? It’s a day off.”

Mycroft inches his way back into the heart of the room. He’s wearing trousers and a narrowly striped Oxford shirt. He turns up the cuffs. “What if I don’t do up those buttons?” He smoothes his shirt-front, which is tucked neatly into his trousers, and glances up shyly. “Would my boyfriend forgive it, then? Since I haven’t got more suitable options.”

Lestrade sighs, steps in closer, shaking his head, particularly depressed because he absolutely believes that all of Mycroft’s clothes are like that, and Mycroft’s the one who draws him into a short kiss. Lestrade tries not to think too hard about the fact that he’s not wearing anything under his robe as he fusses with Mycroft’s collar, which needs no straightening. It’s just a good reason to touch him. “I suppose.” Mycroft’s freshly shaved, the scent of his shaving foam still clinging to him. It’s difficult not to simply press his nose under his jaw and breathe. “But only because you are terribly attractive in whatever you’re wearing. Or not wearing.” Sliding his hand down Mycroft’s side, just on the outside curve of his hip, he turns. “Shower for me.” He leaves Mycroft alone with his tea and the compliment.

The shower is particularly exquisite, the water pressure like a massage, and he might stand there, just enjoying the part where this is Mycroft’s shower, Mycroft’s loofah and washcloth, Mycroft’s…ginseng-and-green-tea sugar scrub. He blinks at the last. It smells really, really nice, though sugar scrub might be the poofiest thing he’s ever seen in a man’s bathroom. The fresh, spicy scent is definitely what he’d caught before, just the bare hint of it.

He might stand there with his nose in the jar for a solid five minutes, letting the water drum on his back.

He considers, too, just tossing the dressing gown back on, but Mycroft is properly dressed, which might be suggesting that he’d like to stay that way, so he puts on the clothing Anthea brought. In the bottom of the basket is a styling product, not the brand he has at home. Whatever it is, it works, though it doesn’t feel like it’s going to dry into hard spikes. An experimental rake through it after he shaves shows that it’s possible to scrunch up his hair and then put it right back the way it was without difficulty. _Oh_.

He brushes his teeth and makes his peace with what that probably means Anthea knows.

Later, he finds Mycroft at the table in the small dining room, tea in hand and _The Times_ and _The Guardian_ spread in front of him. Lestrade sits across from him, stretching the cuffs of his thermal. If he lifts the bottom of the shirt, it would show the waistband of the boxer-briefs, just sticking up over the edge of the jeans.

“She knows what size pants I wear.” Among a lot of other things, apparently. This pair of underwear is green, too. He’s pretty certain he knows why now.

Mycroft glances at him. “I know that, too.” He tries to look casual about it. “Anyone with a basic grasp of spatial relations could extrapolate that with a scant bit of observation.”

Lestrade raises an eyebrow. “I think that’s Mycroftish for ‘I’ve been looking at your arse’.”

Mycroft’s cheeks flame. “I—”

Lestrade hooks his ankle around Mycroft’s, pulls his foot away from the rungs of his chair so their feet are touching beneath the table. “It’s okay. I’ve been looking, too. And not because you needed some spare togs.”

Across from him, Mycroft holds his teacup in both hands, which is sort of funny because his hands are too large for both of them to be employed that way with the small china vessel. He walks one hand across the table and steals the Sports sections from both of Mycroft’s papers.

“Just say if you want these any time soon.” He never reads the newspapers, unless someone at work is using them to show him something. It’s sort of novel to sit here, leafing through the long grey pages. It also gives him something to try to concentrate on, something that isn’t snogging Mycroft stupid. It hasn’t even been an hour since he got off. He is an adult. He can act like it.

Probably.

***

Afternoon finds them in the sitting room, listening to the last part of _The Ring Cycle_ , the one he hasn’t found time to get through yet. They’re each propped against an armrest, their legs twined, and Lestrade is quietly waiting for Mycroft to fall asleep, but he doesn’t. He rubs idly over the seam at Lestrade’s calf, occasionally conducts the music with a fingertip. The sheer lazy ease of it—he hasn’t been so relaxed in ages.

When the disc ends, though, Mycroft sits up a little. “Would you like to do something?” He looks at the window, where the sky is silver grey and a light rain still falls.

“What did you have in mind?” Lestrade is full of suggestions that he should really keep to himself.

“A walk? The library?”

“That’d be all right.” He’s probably going to have to admit, at some point, that he’s never actually been to the British Library.

Mycroft texts something while Lestrade is lacing up his boots. Before he’s even finished the left one, Anthea’s at the door.

Mycroft apologizes to her. “You didn’t need to come up,” he says. “I only wanted you to know I—we—were going out.”

She seems faintly surprised by that. “Was there something you needed to have researched?”

Mycroft shakes his head. “Just going out for a bit.” He takes his coat from the small closet, passes the black leather to Lestrade. He’s glad he wore that one and not his long mackintosh, even if that’s the better option for the weather. Lestrade edges around him, takes down the charcoal fedora and holds it out to Mycroft.

Mycroft gives him the _you can’t possibly be serious_ look, chin tilted and eyebrows raised.

“Anthea,” Lestrade says. “Tell him.” He doesn’t say _it’s hot_ out loud, but he’s pretty sure she gets his drift. “You probably picked it out for him.” For the night they went to Retroactive. Their first proper date. It’s a stab in the dark, but the colors in Mycroft’s flat seem to indicate he wouldn’t likely choose blacks or dark greys for himself. Even his leather sofa is a rich, cherry brown.

Anthea looks startled by the address, but she does nod. “It seemed suitable for the occasion.” The little flick of her gaze directly at him, almost amused-seeming, suggests that _as suitable for that occasion as possible for Mycroft_ is what she means. “It would also be appropriate for the weather,” she says, to Mycroft. “And your guest requested it.”

Mycroft takes the hat, sets it on his head at a slight angle. “He is far more than that,” he says, and he holds out his hand as they’re standing beside the door. His chin is lifted, his voice cool and certain.

There’s nothing to do but take it. Mycroft refuses a driver, shakes out his umbrella as they step out into the grey drizzle. The early afternoon finds the streets fairly quiet, and the umbrella—they sort-of squabble over who’s going to hold it—keeps them from holding hands as they walk down the street, but Lestrade thinks that, if the umbrella wasn’t there, they would. And that would be a first for him.

***

It’s coming around toward midnight again, and tomorrow requires going to the Yard, wearing his own clothes. He’s not certain he even wants to think what Mycroft’s day will be like, after the luxury of twenty-four full hours of rest.

He’s wearing the things Anthea brought, holding what he’d been wearing the night before. Mycroft keeps looking from the bundle under his arm to him to the sofa.

“Out with it, Holmes.”

Mycroft clears his throat. “It might be logical to leave something here, should you need it in the future, if it concerns you that my assistant has intimate knowledge of your undergarments.”

It takes maybe longer than it should for Lestrade to parse all of that. In the course of today, Lestrade has figured it out: the harder it is for Mycroft to say it, the more words he uses. The process seems completely backwards but also endearing.

And it means that Mycroft is suggesting that he stay over again sometime.

“Yeah,” he says. “I like that idea.”

***

It’s early on a Wednesday evening. They’re at Mycroft’s. He’s still technically working, doing eleven things at once on his mobile, but he’s doing it one-handed. Lestrade is half-asleep with the slow play of Mycroft’s fingers on his scalp, glad to be done with a fairly intense three days of court appearances. Then his mobile blips quietly, the e-mail sound, and he opens his phone to find a message from Corrie. Since Mycroft’s similarly engaged, he doesn’t feel rude about taking a moment to dash out a quick reply, which turns into a few paragraphs about the weather and the England U-21 team.

“Tell me about them,” Mycroft says, carding through Lestrade’s hair. “Elizabeth and Coralina.”

Lestrade tips his head back from where it rests on Mycroft’s thigh to look at him, his thumbs on the keypad of his phone. He feels like it’s a stupid question, but: “How did you know?”

“You don’t bother with e-mail on your mobile except for family,” Mycroft says. “And at this hour, your brother and his wife are likely engaged with work.” Mycroft knows Bob’s got the restaurant and Marisol is at the gallery. He smiles. “So one of the girls must be sneaking a bit of social time during school.”

Lestrade has to laugh a little. “Corrie sneaks a lot of it.” The girls share a mobile phone that’s supposed to be only for emergencies. Corrie considers being bored at school an emergency, and he’d scold her for it except she _is_ bored and doing well and he’s sneaked more calls to Mycroft in the last three weeks than he should really admit. It would be a bit pot-kettle to get on her case about it. He holds up the phone so Mycroft can read her message. This one is a bit of a diatribe on her English class, where everything takes so _long_ and she’s read this book _already_. And, she writes, _And the one we’re reading is EDITED. ← TRAVESTY. Come here and arrest everyone for crimes against books._

Mycroft quirks one eyebrow. “She’s got quite the vocabulary.”

“Her genetic make-up is somewhere around a forty-forty-twenty split between sponge, parrot, and Tasmanian devil.” Corrie’s like a little force of nature. He scrolls through his inbox until he gets to the one where Betsy’s talking about her guitar recital. _It was unreal,_ she writes. _I had to restart the first song twice, but when I got ten bars in, it was like there wasn’t anyone there at all. But then there everyone was, and I didn’t even screw up the_ coda _, and I totally know why people smash their guitars on-stage. I wanted to kick the amplifier. What a rush._

“But she didn’t actually kick or break anything,” he says.

“Likely wise,” Mycroft says, and he’s smiling. When Lestrade closes the message, he glances at the screen and away again. “I don’t mean to pry, but is that—” His fingertip twitches toward the attachment from Bob.

“The video? Yeah.” He’s watched it six times. It’s only a little clip from the middle, five minutes out of twenty. Betsy’s guitar teacher has the whole thing, though, and she’ll have that when they’ve reviewed it and talked about everything.

“May I?” He turns his own mobile face-down on the sofa’s arm. “If Elizabeth wouldn’t mind.”

“She’d be over the moon that you wanted to see it.” The girls don’t know who Mycroft is yet, but he still thinks that would be true. He hits play, hands the phone to Mycroft. He watches it twice.

“She’s very careful through the _allegro_ ,” Mycroft says, and she is. She takes it probably slower than she should—she’d sent him the John Clarke video of “Aguila Cosmica” so he could hear it. And she’s playing a slightly simplified version that her teacher wrote for her—but she’s meticulous through the finger-picking and dampening. He’s listened to it a dozen times. She takes it a little slowly, but she’s almost perfect through it. Lestrade finds himself on edge: almost perfect. He hadn’t thought about this part: offering ordinary mortals for scrutiny from a Holmes. After having watched three football matches with him, Lestrade’s never met a man more wholly convinced that he could coach the team better than Redknapp can, and Mycroft can hear the most minute slips in recordings of live audio—his hearing is utterly extraordinary, and he’s got excruciatingly high standards for professionals. That’s likely why he does what he does, and Lestrade’s grateful if he’s making the people in _his_ line of work toe the line, but it’s suddenly a lot less enthralling when Bits is a potential target.

Mycroft plays it one more time.

Lestrade sits up, turns around, so he’s facing Mycroft. “What?”

“It’s just—” He pauses again, frowns a little, squints at the small screen.

“What?” He might half-bark it this time.

Mycroft startles a little. “I was just going to say how extraordinary this reach is. Here,” he says, pausing the clip, and he points. “Her hands are significantly smaller than an adult player’s, but she still makes this chord crisply. It’s lovely.” He lets it play the rest of the way through, watches it all, the corners of his mouth turned up, keeping time with one finger on his kneecap.

Lestrade feels himself deflate like a balloon. “Yeah,” he says. “It is.” And then his chest feels as though it swells.

“I would like to see the whole of it, some day, if that might be possible.” He gives Lestrade his mobile back, picks up his own, which vibrated a few minutes ago.

Mycroft drops his Blackberry when Lestrade knots both hands in the shoulders of his waistcoat and hauls him into his lap. When they dig the mobile from between the sofa cushions later, Mycroft has accidentally texted Anthea a garble of letters. Her responding text is less than amused, and it contains a reminder to draw the curtains, thank you.

***

He’s dozing on the couch, putting off going to bed after a long-distance viewing of the Champions League Arsenal-Bayern Munich match with Mycroft, who’s gone up to Manchester for something. Arsenal came out ahead, Mycroft will be back tomorrow; he’s pleased, sprawled across the sofa, with most everything.

When his mobile rings, he almost falls off the sofa. It’s Bob and Marisol’s number, and he hopes nothing else has happened at the girls’ school.

It is about school, actually, but not bad news. More specifically, it’s about them not going to school for a week. Less than two weeks from now.

“Their teachers will be scandalized, but I doubt very much that when they’re applying to colleges, there will be that one missed week in fourth and sixth grade that left them _totalmente_ unprepared for everything they will face.” There’s the vacuum-ish sound of the refrigerator door.

He has to laugh. Marisol takes a broad view of education, is very big on experiencing and _doing_ and is very disgusted with continuous standardized testing, particularly because it makes Betsy incredibly anxious. Jean Lestrade loves his daughter-in-law to the ends of the earth, except during World Cup.

She explains: a new gallery opening in Chicago, a small group of very enthusiastic, very generous patrons. Her presence is non-negotiable, as the business manager for a number of art collectives. She also does the books for Bob’s restaurant and for the Aguilar y Cruz family winery. “The girls could come with me, but they’ll be bored, and there will be a lot of events they could not attend.” Which means hotel sitter service. Which they hate. Betsy is right on the cusp of the age when she probably could manage herself alone for a few hours, anywhere, and finds the very concept of being “babysat” insulting, but she couldn’t do it with Corrie, who occasionally gets an idea and cannot be wrangled nor reasoned with. And though they get on famously most of the time, they’re sisters, and sometimes that means doing something just because the other one said not to. He has a brief flash of sympathy for Mycroft and Sherlock’s mother.

Bob says, “And I can’t be gone for that long, not without a lot more notice.” It’s only by sheer force of Marisol’s personality that the restaurant’s closed one full day a week. If they stayed home with him, it would be babysitters again, from the time school’s over until well after they’re usually asleep.

“And they want to visit you. They’ve been mad to ask themselves, but if they ask, you won’t say no.” Mari’s voice is amused. And maybe he does have some difficulty refusing one more song, one more story about the strange man with the skull (all Sherlock tales are considerably edited, though), one more chapter. “Think about it, _hermano_. If you want your life turned inside out, if you’re able to rearrange your schedule. It’s short notice. We’ve explained that to the girls. They’ll live if you can’t do it.”

“Just tell me when their flight’s getting in.” Even as he says it, there are a hundred things he knows he should have looked into first, particularly with his work schedule, but he’ll make it work. If he has to ask John to fake a doctor’s note for him, he’ll do it. He scrawls their names across the calendar, one Friday through the following.

***

 _Getting a bit domestic, don’t you think?_ Something Will had said, about a month before they broke up. One of a number of reasons for the split, reasons including Lestrade’s schedule, Will’s general lack of interest in music, Lestrade’s occasional jealousy over the desk attendant at what used to be their gym, and Will’s usual preference to sleep alone, at his own flat, thanks, clear in Clerkenwell, even if it meant one of them crossing London at four in the morning. Not that he and Mycroft haven’t done that enough themselves—the night bus driver on his route has certainly noticed something—but it’s a reluctant necessity. They haven’t shared a bed since that first time. It seems strange to ask him after dinner, after football, when there’s no real _reason_ for it. It’s easy to find a reason when one’s _already_ in bed and undressed.

He’s not sure how he’s going to say this, either—how much more domestic can it get than asking if Mycroft wants to meet his nieces, who are going to be staying with him for a week? _I know it’s difficult to find time together as it is, but would you mind awfully if I’ve got two children by the hand for seven days?_ Not that Betsy and Corrie are _children_ —Bits is two months shy of thirteen and letting absolutely no one forget it—but he’s certainly not letting them alone in London, not for five minutes, and he’s not getting someone else to sit with them while he’s with Mycroft, not when he’s lucky if he sees them twice a year. Negotiating how he’s going to deal with the work situation is going to be hard enough.

Of course, it’s possible that Mycroft won’t even be in London that week. He might miss their visit entirely. The thought strikes Lestrade strangely hard. The girls can’t be here and not meet him. They just can’t. And he has no idea how he’ll introduce him, how he could possibly pretend that he and Mycroft are only friends. It was never really an issue with Will, and before Will, there wasn’t anyone, really, that would have merited an introduction since before Betsy started school.

He breathes into his empty coffee mug. One crisis at a time.

***

He thinks he might have planned this poorly. Mycroft is standing beside the sofa, holding up the jeans, the t-shirt, the hooded sweatshirt. It’s Spurs gear and a The Who t-shirt, a pair of dark denims. He doesn’t show him the set of pyjamas, the underwear that are still in the bedroom. Buying clothes for him seems very domestic, and a little presumptive. Of course, on that count, he didn’t start it. But neither did Mycroft.

“Because you cannot _live_ in only button-downs,” Lestrade says. He donated the rest of Will’s clothes yesterday. Also, Mycroft’s clothes are not designed for lounging on the couch, no matter how delicious he looks in them, and for completely selfish and lewd reasons, Lestrade wants Mycroft to have at least something to wear that can just be tossed in the washer.

“Not,” he says, “that there’s anything wrong with your clothes. I just—” Mycroft’s mouth on his cuts him off.

“Thank you,” he says. And he undoes the buttons of his waistcoat, drapes it over his jacket resting on the armchair. Lestrade hopes he’ll keep going, but he doesn’t. But he does carry everything with him to the toilet, and when he comes out, carrying his brown wool, he has the hood up and his hands knotted in the front pocket. “I love this,” he says from the shrouding shelter of navy blue.

He gives Lestrade that doubtful head-tilt, though, when Lestrade circles him, looking him over from head to toe. The feeling of Lestrade’s right hand sliding into his back pocket seems to knock that expression right off his face.

“There’s this, too,” Lestrade says, and he grins. Maybe he squeezes a little. Under his hand, Mycroft’s arse is not as soft as he expects it to be, and he’d like, very much, to get an even better feel, but Mycroft’s wearing that frozen look. He slides his hand up over Mycroft’s back, noses around the edge of the hood to kiss his cheek. “Sit with me.”

When he speaks, Mycroft moves, sits on the couch cross-ways, his legs spread. Lestrade isn’t sure this is the best position to talk about something that could turn less-than-pleasant, but he likes what it says about how Mycroft’s feeling. He settles carefully between Mycroft’s legs, so his back is against Mycroft’s chest, his head on Mycroft’s shoulder. Mycroft wraps his arms around him, puts his hands in the pocket of Lestrade’s sweatshirt.

“Thief.”

Mycroft nuzzles his ear. “I do work for the government.”

He tips his head to give Mycroft better access, though the feeling of his mouth, his breath, is very close to being ticklish. “You are the government.”

“Not _all_ of it.” He sucks on Lestrade’s earlobe, licks around his earring. Another time, Lestrade’s going to tell him to bite, to tug on it. But he has to say something before he’s giving Mycroft a reason to change his clothes again.

Lestrade eventually has to make himself duck away from the warm, wet feeling. “I want to talk to you about something and you’re distracting me.”

Mycroft stops immediately, though his left hand leaves the pouch and his fingers tangle with Lestrade’s. “Is anything the matter?”

He shakes his head. “I have a bit of a schedule change at the end of next week. Betsy and Corrie are coming for a few, well, seven, days. Bit of short notice.” He’s got about thirty percent of his work schedule taken care of, calling in favors and promising the same. Dimmock’s going to own his soul by the end of it, but he’d rather that than ask Gregson for anything. He’s got a few days still to get the rest of that week under control. Hopefully.

Mycroft brightens. “That’s wonderful. They’ll be so pleased.”

He nods, and his right hand reaches for the chewed-on pen on the coffee table. Mycroft catches his hand, holds a finger to his lips. He bites it lightly, kisses the tip.

“But something’s bothering you, obviously.” Mycroft’s fingertip skims his lower lip in that way that makes Lestrade’s eyes flutter closed and his groin heat.

“God, stop that.” He bites harder at Mycroft’s finger, catches both hands, holds them against his chest. “I just—work.” He swallows. He’s really not sure what he’s going to do if he can’t figure out a way to work out his hours. He could take leave days, but that will start cutting into the time he has available for the summer, for seeing all of them when Bob and Mari are in Barcelona for that wedding, and for the winter holidays. “And—this. Us.” He tilts his head to look Mycroft in the eye. “Even if I can get all of my shifts covered, I can’t leave them, and, well. I won’t be around much. I’ll miss you.” That way, Mycroft doesn’t have to deal with the family reunion business, and it’s probably safer that way. Even if they’re clothed, this sort of behavior is definitely not for public consumption. Particularly when Mycroft’s petting softly at his collarbone, through the fabric of his sweatshirt, and he’s got one ankle curled over Lestrade’s. It’s just one way to be close, to be touching, for Mycroft, but it’s also holding Lestrade’s legs apart, and he can’t help but think about it in another context. When Mycroft’s not thinking about it too hard, his body’s saying _more_. It’s Mycroft’s brain that’s holding him back, for whatever reason, and it still functions, mostly, when he’s aroused, unlike most of the men in Lestrade’s personal experience. But that’s for another conversation.

Mycroft’s fingers still. His chest rises and falls under Lestrade’s shoulderblades. “I understand,” he says. “Might I be permitted to at least meet them, while they’re here?”

Lestrade levers himself up a little more, swivels to see him. “You want to?” Not that he wasn’t planning on _making_ that happen, but Will had had to be dragged to that dinner with his parents, and that was after nearly a year together.

The no-one-is-possibly-that-stupid look on Mycroft’s face surpasses even Sherlock’s most intense version. Lestrade didn’t think that was even possible. Some detached corner of his brain wonders if Sherlock knows Mycroft can do this better than he can.

“Gregory,” Mycroft says, pressing his own middle finger between his eyes, rubbing as though to massage the part of his brain that Lestrade just broke with his idiocy. “They’re the world to you. Certainly I would like to meet them.” His breath heaves again. “I want to know about everything that is important to you. And you have no bloody idea how difficult it is, on a daily basis, for me not to simply _find out_ because I could. With no effort at all, I could. Your life is an open book, whether you’re aware of that or not.”

Lestrade feels his stomach tighten. He’d been under the impression that it wasn’t, actually. Mycroft cups his cheek, tilts his head up more. Mycroft’s jaw has that hard, determined set to it, and he just said “bloody.” Lestrade hasn’t heard him curse without quoting something. He knows that means something.

Mycroft goes on. “But, at the risk of over-extending the metaphor, I want you to read that book to me. I want to know about you because you wanted me to know.”

Kissing him feels like the only thing he’s capable of, but he has to say something. “Me, too.” Which is a complete failure of meaningful speech. He tries again. “Anything you want to know. Everything.” And then he gives it up in favor of the kissing. Mycroft doesn’t protest that, tugs him over until they’re properly face-to-face.

Lestrade is about to try getting a hand under Mycroft’s shirt again when Mycroft says, “Let me take care of your work schedule. Please.” The words smudge against his throat.

“What?” He pulls back to meet his eyes.

“Sherlock would say I was meddling, but let me. That week will simply happen. You don’t have to do anything. Let me do this for you.” Mycroft’s eyes are all but pleading.

Lestrade bites his own lip. “I—that’s hardly ethical. It wouldn’t be fair.”

Mycroft’s fingers slide up the back of his neck, pet softly. “You’ve gone well outside of proscribed procedure for my brother. You’ve helped him, at risk to yourself and to your career.”

“He helped me, more like.” The shushing fingertip touches his mouth again. No matter how much he wants to be annoyed by it, he can’t.

“Please,” Mycroft says. “After your nieces leave, you can work eighteen-hour days to your heart’s content. But they ought not have to share you with murderers and rapists when they see you so seldom. _That_ hardly seems fair.” The fingertip traces down over his chin. “If you wouldn’t do it for yourself, would you accept my assistance for them?”

Lestrade feels his jaw going slack. “Christ, you fight dirty.” Mycroft’s already won and he knows it. That much is visible.

“In this case, the ends justify—”

Whatever else he was going to say gets lost in the reaction when Lestrade sucks his finger into his mouth, taking the whole thing, hollowing his cheeks. And then maybe Lestrade is winning because Mycroft arches up against him, keeps the fingers of his other hand curled tight in Lestrade’s belt-loops to hold them together.

The friction is rough, harder than before, and Mycroft pulls his fingers away in favor of licking into Lestrade’s mouth. Lestrade nips at Mycroft’s lips, trying not to grin at the frustrated furrow in his forehead, keeps doing it until Mycroft makes that fist in his hair, holds him still, kisses him properly. When he gives in to it, when he rubs in close, Mycroft makes a low sound, curls one leg around him. That’s really all it takes before he’s moaning against Mycroft’s mouth, spent against rasping denim.

It’s quick, and Lestrade would be embarrassed at that, but it feels like he’s been on edge forever (or a little more than a week, which counts), and it’s worth it for the way Mycroft’s eyes go wide, the way he thrusts up harder until they’re just cleaving together, trousers wrecked.

Mycroft still looks uncomfortable after, but not as much as the first time, running his hand slowly over Lestrade’s back.

Lestrade kisses him one more time. “Any chance you could stay?” He says it out loud before he gives himself a chance to talk himself out of doing so. They’ll both have to wake up early, anyway. He decides to confess his other purchases, by way of persuasion.

Mycroft kisses him in a way that makes him wish he were twenty years younger at this very second. He offers Mycroft the loo first to clean up, to change.

When he comes back from the lav, Mycroft is standing beside the bookcase, his hand conspicuously near the photo album wedged between Stephen Fry’s autobiography and a few of the novels Hugh Laurie wrote. He hasn’t moved it because the thin film of dust hasn’t been disturbed, but he’s very close to it. Lestrade tucks up behind him, puts his chin on Mycroft’s shoulder. He has to push up on his toes a little to do it, and he likes that.

“Are you actually volunteering for the family album experience?” He kisses the side of Mycroft’s neck. “No one does that.”

“I do.”

Lestrade slides the small album from its place, carries it toward the bedroom. “Come on, then.” It feels almost surreal when Mycroft gets into bed with him, props himself up against the headboard expectantly. A man getting into bed with him, clothed in frankly poncy (if lovely) pyjamas, waiting to see the kitschy, embarrassing, and sentimental pictures that are generally the way to never getting laid again.

“You’ve really never had any interaction with the gay male community, have you?” He snugs right up to Mycroft. The look of him between the sheets is a good one.

Mycroft frowns. “Have I done something wrong?”

Lestrade shakes his head. “Just writing your own script.” It’s—refreshing. And he knows he’s spent his life among the same type of gay men, his own type, not quite in the closet but not quite out for professional or personal reasons, the type raised to a certain kind of toughness out of the necessity of the generation, the bleakness of the working-class eighties.

“It’s good,” Lestrade says. “I like it.” He decides: he really does. He doesn’t have to hide anything from Mycroft; then again, he’s a Holmes. There is no hiding even when one wants to. He puts his arm around Mycroft’s waist, flips open the album.

The first photos are of his parents, one from their wedding and one from their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Their fiftieth is coming up in two years, and he says so.

Mycroft lifts the album closer. “You could be your father’s brother.” He looks from Lestrade’s face to the photo and back.

“I’m taller, at least,” he says. “Look at their feet.” In both photos, his father is standing one step above his mother, though even so he’s only barely a bit taller. Jeanne Margaret Lestrade, née Dawson, tall and brown-haired and more brown-armed than her one bridesmaid. Even now, at seventy, she’s in her garden every day.

“Jean and Jeanne?” Mycroft’s trying not to smile.

“Yeah. I know.” He shakes his head. “It made taking phone messages for them an utter bitch of a task.” Particularly when people mispronounce his father’s name about fifty percent of the time.

Lestrade turns the page, and there’s all of them from one Christmas when he was sixteen and Bob seventeen. Bob’s got his hair in an honest-to-God mullet, and his own is shaved into a shortish mohawk, stiffened into a sharp crest. He and Bob are wearing mulberry cable-knit sweaters. They’d been gifts from their maternal grandmother, opened that morning.

“This was Christmas morning. I got that haircut on Christmas Eve. It did not get me out of going to church, and this photo was sent to every relative I had at the time.” In retrospect, he thinks his haircut holds up better to scrutiny than Bob’s.

“You’re not fraternal twins,” Mycroft says, though there’s some question in it. Until Bob hit his last growth spurt, they did look nearly alike, though Bob’s hair is a little lighter. Bob ended up significantly taller, longer in the face.

He shakes his head. “Not quite. He’s a year and a half older.”

The next set of photos were actually given to him by Marisol, relics of her and Bob’s meeting in Mallorca. She’d actually woken him up from a nap on the sand because she was afraid he’d get a sunburn. Which he did—a very bad one, just shy of blistering. He peeled for weeks. While Bob was accidentally charring himself, he’d been trying to chat up a lifeguard, with no success.

“His loss,” Mycroft says, looking at a shot that neither he nor Bob had known Marisol had taken, one of them standing at the edge of the surf, Bob’s elbow planted on his shoulder while Bob’s head’s turned toward the sea and his own is turned toward that lifeguard. The man’s not in the frame, but that’s a moment Lestrade has always remembered. He thinks he’ll remember this one, too: the stutter of Mycroft’s Adam’s apple and the way he touches the thin plastic covering the photo. If he was a bit vain in those days, he thinks he earned it.

Then there’s the series, taken two days later, where he sneaked Marisol’s camera from her purse and took four photos of her and Bob dancing. Even the still shots show them already mad for each other, Bob’s sunburned arms livid against her white blouse, Marisol’s hands planted firmly on his arse.

“Hard to believe that it’s him robbing the cradle, isn’t it?” Mycroft glances at him. “She’s six years younger than he is. Her parents were furious.”

“But they met on holiday? And that worked?” Mycroft turns through another page, a few shots of the three of them, taken by Marisol’s friend, who is the one getting married in June.

He nods. “Like a house on fire.” He explains the long, formal wooing process that followed, the part that was really for Marisol’s parents. That was good for Bob, though. It made him get his shite together, something for which their parents loved Marisol. Also, “I was in the doghouse with Mari at first, though—she wanted me to show Lola a good time because she felt bad ditching her for Bob.” He slept on the floor of Mari and Lola’s hotel room a few times, actually, to give the lovebirds space. Not that Lola didn’t try to get him in the bed.

Mycroft’s cheeks color a bit. “You’re exclusively…interested…in men?”

He nods. “Since forever. There was one exception, when I was—” He does the math. “—twenty-three. She played bass for this fucking brilliant cover band.” He glances at Mycroft, sidelong. “But let’s just say that in the five months we hung out, _I_ never fucked _her_.” He turns another page. “Stef’s got herself a wife now, adopted a kid. Works for social services.” He’d actually run into her on a case, about eight years back. Sad circumstances, but good to see her.

When he looks again, Mycroft’s wide-eyed. He tries not to laugh, but he can’t suppress all of it. He rubs his hand along Mycroft’s ribs, nuzzles his neck. “How about you?”

Mycroft lets the album rest across his thighs, folds his hands in his lap. “I,” he says, and the sentence stops for a moment. “Have not had a particular history of being interested in people, at least not like that.”

Lestrade is not ashamed to say he doesn’t really have any idea what that means.

Mycroft explains: “The disdain with which Sherlock views most of the known world, with the exception of one Doctor John Watson?” Lestrade is well acquainted with that. Mycroft says, “I was—am—far worse.”

“You are not.”

“I hide it better.”

“You mean you bother trying to hide it at all.”

“Yes.” Mycroft exhales. “My line of work requires that much.” His hands fist together in his lap. “And the single previous instance in which I might have wished to express that interest—that interest both would not and could not have been reciprocated.”

“Married?”

“Royalty. I will not say from where, so please do not ask.”

“Damn.” That takes care of the “couldn’t.” “But why say ‘wouldn’t?’” He looks Mycroft over again. “You’re a catch.” Even without the terrifying amount of influence he wields, he’s fascinating—witty, somewhat overwhelmingly intelligent, and handsome. He’s never going to be in a cologne advert, but his face is interesting, has character. His face requires looking at. Lestrade likes that, rather a lot.

Mycroft’s expression turns faintly rueful. “The version of Mycroft Holmes that you see is less than two years old.”

“You make it sound like you’re a robot.” He grins. “You have been up-graded?” His Cyberman voice isn’t great, but it’s recognizable.

“It feels that way sometimes.” He pushes the sheet back a bit, edges his pyjama top up, carefully showing just a single long scar under his right ribs, one inch of skin. “I was rather ill for a while, and my gallbladder failed.” He covers himself again quickly. “I lost six stone in four months, four more since.” The last part is intentional, he says. Which explains why, when he’d gone through all of the cupboards in Mycroft’s flat, he couldn’t find a single packet of crisps anywhere. That has to be illegal.

Still, Lestrade can’t even imagine there being enough of him to lose that kind of weight. At the very most, he’s at fourteen stone now. And that’s a generous estimate; Mycroft’s body isn’t that dense. He’d guess it’s closer to thirteen. Then something trips in his memory.

“I saw you. The Rushington murders. 2003.” Sherlock had been absolutely up to his arse in it—a breaking and entering in a government building that Gregson had wanted to pin him to the wall over, Anderson demanding a piss test for him because there was utterly no way he would have passed it, half a dozen less egregious but repeated offenses. That was before he’d gotten Sally on his team, but if she’d been there, she’d have been ready to kill him, too. But he’d defended Sherlock—one of the two times he’s been suspended for Sherlock—because they had a suspect caught in it, on film, and they had an elderly man who was going to be victim number three who’d gotten to go home to his wife. “You and Sherlock had a row.” It was a fairly intense one, but it hadn’t stuck out because there wasn’t anyone there who hadn’t shouted at Sherlock at least a bit, himself included.

Mycroft nods. “Yes. We do that.” He’s sort of smiling.

Right now, he wishes he remembered it better. All he remembers is that Sherlock somehow disappeared after that, from the scene, and in two months, he was back, consulting. He doesn’t remember Mycroft’s face from that at all, only the shape and Sherlock being even more vulgar than usual.

“No one’s mentioned my suspensions at my reviews.” At the time, he’d figured he’d just gotten lucky, had had enough good behavior (and good results) to ignore them. One look at Mycroft confirms that such is not the case.

“Because they no longer exist.”

“You can’t—”

Mycroft raises an eyebrow.

“Jesus.”

They sit there, in silence, the open photo album between them.

“Fuck,” he says, to the air. And then, “Thank you.” Finally, “Why didn’t you introduce yourself?” At that very moment, he wouldn’t have been single—that was…Geoff, then, but that didn’t last much after—but he’d have liked to know Mycroft. Just to know him.

But Mycroft shakes his head. “I knew what I needed to know about you.” That rueful look again. “I didn’t know what I was missing.”

Lestrade kisses him. “I think it worked out well enough, in the end.” He would like to keep kissing him, but Mycroft is still fixed on the collection of photos.

“You’re not getting out of this,” he says. “Give me knowledge.” His own hand slides around Lestrade’s waist, fingers splaying at his hip. The pages turn.

Mycroft’s hand comes between two leaves. "This is the first photo in which you're wearing your ring." He touches the plain gold band. "What's that story?" The assurance he has when he says it—Lestrade raises an eyebrow. One side of Mycroft's mouth turns up. "Yes," he confesses. "I did search out that much. I know you're not married. So why do you wear it?"

"Why do you wear yours?"

"Ease."

Lestrade nods. "The same. Easier to get folks to talk to me that way." Cuts down on the number of angry drunk men assuming that what he's really trying to do is steal their bird. And—“This was my grandfather's ring, Da’s father. Bob got our grandmother's, when she passed." He points at the diamond and band on Marisol's finger. There was one Christmas, right before they sold the restaurant in Hampstead, right before his parents moved to France, when he and his mother finished a bottle and a half of rosé, when she asked when he was going to find someone to give it to. He was twenty-seven then, the year after Bob and Mari's wedding. He thinks he'd just laughed. He didn’t start wearing it until he was in his thirties, until he’d made D.I.

“Your family—they’re supportive?” Mycroft doesn’t have to specify about what.

He’s glad he can nod now. “It took a little while.” His mum’s parents never knew, and one of her brothers, the older one, was an arsehole about it, but he was an arsehole about many things. And with his own family, at first, it was just another one of his rebellious phases—too much of that David Bowie chap—and then when he didn’t grow out of it, it was a tragedy because his mother was never going to have any grandchildren. “Bob was…not so successful in the dating scene.”

Mycroft looks aghast. “But—he’s beautiful.” Lestrade will take that as a compliment; Mycroft’s said they still look alike.

“He was shy before Marisol. She wouldn’t let him be shy with her.” She also wouldn’t take no for an answer: she got him out to the clubs that his own brother couldn’t get him to. Bob had much preferred a dark booth and drinking heavily. “And that saved us both.” After the wedding, after Bob and Mari announced their plans to have children after he got the restaurant stabilized (which took a bit longer than expected), the pressure was off him. His mum still wants him to settle down with someone—about five years ago, she said flat-out she’d like if he were less of a slut, which is a terrifying thing to hear from one’s mother the year before one’s fortieth birthday, and likely why she’d been so keen on Will without even knowing much about him—but he can’t say that to Mycroft. It’ll sound like he’s hinting.

“What about you?” He pets at Mycroft’s ribs. “Of all the things Sherlock could take offense to, I can’t imagine anyone’s sexuality bothers him.” Beyond the realm of _having_ one, anyway. He’s been informed, several times, that he’d be a lot better at everything if he weren’t so preoccupied with cock all the time. Sherlock hasn’t said that in front of his team, though, for which he’s grateful. It’s also unlikely that Sherlock will be berating him again for that, in particular, any time soon.

Mycroft shakes his head. “Personal details aren’t something our family has ever discussed. One shares such things at one’s own peril.”

Lestrade blinks. He imagines trying to tell Sherlock about a teenaged crush. “Right. I suppose not.” His hand slides up to Mycroft’s shoulder. “Then you’d better brace yourself. Betsy and Corrie will give you a crash course in the sharing of personal details. Whether you like it or not.” More likely, whether _he_ likes it or not. Bob is probably priming the girls with all sorts of ridiculous stories from their childhood.

Mycroft turns another page, and it’s from another Christmas, probably after dessert course number three. He’s asleep on his parents’ sofa, his mouth half-open. Corrie, four years old, is sprawled across his chest, a stuffed dinosaur clutched under one arm, and Betsy’s tucked up to his side, both of her arms curled around his bicep. There’s a half-sucked candy-cane two inches from one of her hands, stuck to his elbow.

“I shall be on my guard,” he says. He smiles slow and broad. Lestrade decides he’s got to call Bob and Marisol tomorrow. There’s something he needs to ask them.

***

He calls Bob and Marisol on his lunch break, hopes he can catch them both at home while the girls are at school.

“Mari’s just getting out of the shower, so we still have four minutes to talk shit about Barcelona.” Lestrade hears the sound of the receiver feel bigger, the connection widen: he’s on speaker.

They both let loose on Thierry Henry in French. Even if he did show some fine football at Highbury, he’s not a Gunner anymore, and Lestrade just doesn’t care for his attitude. Even their father doesn’t like the man, and Jean Lestrade is of the general opinion that no one plays finer football than his own countrymen.

Marisol’s voice comes in from far off, then closer, singing “El Cant del Barça.” She’s got a glamorous voice, low and throaty, that seems out of place with her petite frame. Corrie takes after her in looks, is small for her age, gingery blond, while Betsy looks like a Lestrade, dark-haired and dark-eyed. Their mum says she looks like their aunt Helene, their father’s younger sister, an aunt they only know from photos.

Marisol’s mouth is right next to the receiver, half-deafening him.

Then Bob suddenly goes a muffled kind of quiet, and Lestrade’s pretty happy he called them instead of Skyping. There are a number of things he never needs to see on a webcam, and what’s likely happening now is one of them. It was scarring enough when the three of them were sharing that flat in Camden Town for four months. He ended up giving away that kitchen table.

“Traitor,” he says to Bob, and Bob protests that he’s under duress.

Marisol cuts the speakerphone, picks up the other handset. “ _Hermano. ¿Qué pasa?_ “ She’s laughing, which means she’s probably laughing at Bob. He likes that she calls him brother, that she’s never called him an in-law.

“I’m saying nothing until you’re done.”

There’s one more kissing sound, then the hiss of espresso steam. “There,” she says, and the predictable snap of her smacking Bob’s hand away from her cup.

And now they’re waiting.

He clears his throat. Bob hums eight notes from an American television quiz show in the interim.

“About the girls’ visit—”

Bob huffs. “Fuck the police, Greg. You can’t be working the _whole_ time. The girls are already out of their brains over this.”

“Hey.” Bob’s been on him about his work schedule since the nineties, which is hilarious, coming from him. “I didn’t say I was.” Thanks to Mycroft, work isn’t an issue. It still feels strange, but he’ll make up for it. He’s also going to get some cold case files and take them home; he can have a look and see if he can work something out there after the girls are asleep. Work isn’t why he’s calling. “It’s—well. I’d like to introduce Mycroft to the girls. And I don’t think I can play it straight with him in front of them.” And even if he could, he really doesn’t want to. It’s easy enough for him to pass in public when it’s convenient—most people actually thought he and Will were just mates—and it’s not something he much mentions at work, but with family, with Mycroft, he doesn’t _want_ to let people see through it. But. “Wanted to know what you thought of that.” Bob and Marisol haven’t met Mycroft, don’t know him, and with all this unpleasantness at their school, maybe they don’t want the girls even thinking about it just now.

There’s a bit of silence, and Lestrade chews on the edge of one thumbnail.

Bob says, “I wish I were close enough to punch you.” He’s sort of laughing. Marisol is making her soft _ay-ay-ay_ , and he can see her shaking her head.

“Gregory,” she says, and it’s amazing how different it sounds coming from her than it does coming from Mycroft. “We’ve been _waiting_ for you to find someone you wanted to introduce to them. Or us.” The scold is hard in her voice.

“Dumbass,” Bob adds.

Lestrade exhales. He feels a little ridiculous now. “Do they already know?”

Bob makes a shrugging sound. “Maybe. Maybe not. We haven’t said anything—that’s your business. And they’ll probably say they totally knew forever anyway.”

He can’t help but wonder what they’ll think. It’s one thing to have their young, righteous indignation about a general cause. It’s another thing altogether to be somewhere with their uncle and his boyfriend.

“And you’re you,” Marisol says, “their favourite _tío_. I believe that is unlikely to change.”

He doesn’t say it helps that he’s their only uncle. They’re likely to have another one in a year or two, when Mari’s little sister and her fiancé finally have their gigantic confection of a wedding, but Mari and Sofia aren’t as close as he and Bob are. Bob doesn’t like Sofia’s fiancé, either, says his teeth are too white and that he doesn’t watch football. Not that he’s a bad guy, just—dull in a very good-looking way. _He doesn’t read_ , Betsy says. Corrie maintains that he _can’t_. She says that’s why he wears sunglasses all the time. Mari just says he used to play tennis.

“But you’re telling them.” Bob is pointing at him, he can feel it. “However much or little you want to say, but you’re saying it.”

Lestrade expects the words to fill him with dread, but they don’t. He’s strangely relieved. “I’ll leave the computer on tonight. If they can spare some time before bed?” It’ll be late for him, but Mycroft’s working late again, too.

***

The open connection on the laptop chirps at nine-thirty, and he’s nervous all at once. He’d been preparing for this to come closer to midnight, after the girls had dinner, after they’ve had a chance to settle down after school. But he said he wanted to talk to them, and the girls are always fans of immediately-if-not-sooner.

He sits on the floor in front of the coffee table, accepts the call. There’s no one in front of the screen. “Password,” he says to Bob and Marisol’s living room.

“Never tickle a sleeping dragon.” Corrie slides into view on the rolling office chair, a tall glass of milk tinted with coffee in her hands. Betsy flicks her in the arm and squeezes onto the edge of it, too, holding a cup of tea. He makes a face at that; she sticks her tongue out at him.

“ _Ça va?_ “ They speak at the same time. Corrie pokes Betsy’s shoulder.

“ _Ça va._ “ It goes. Nothing exciting going on. Just trying to decide the best way to come out to a pair of pre-teens. The very sensible and logical approach he’d thought about all day is completely gone from his brain. He says, “I haven’t seen those earrings before.” Betsy’s got tiny silver knots in each earlobe. Corrie has her ears pierced, too, but she can’t seem to take them out for football practice _and_ come home with both of them still in her possession.

“Got them at the museum,” Betsy says, “when we saw the Unicorn Tapestries.” Beside her, Corrie holds up the thin chain around her neck and a similar-looking knot-charm turns into a pixely blur as it slides. Betsy tilts her head. “Haven’t seen you online much since then,” she says.

He should have made himself some coffee for this. “About that,” he says.

Corrie’s head jerks up from her drink. “We can still come, right?” Her dark eyes are wide as saucers, and Betsy’s already starting her sad-puppy face.

“Yes,” he says. “Of course.” There’s an icy clutch in his stomach: as long as they still _want_ to. And then they’re quiet, waiting.

He says, “Remember that night you were helping your da in the restaurant and I called?”

Betsy nods. Corrie mutters that everyone on the planet was awake and doing something _awesome_ except for her and it _wasn’t fair_ and it was fascist. He’s not going to ask where she learned “fascist.” But then she’s just waiting again.

“And I had a friend over?”

They nod again, and Betsy lifts the Hogwarts crest on her cardigan front toward the eye of the webcam. She circles it with her finger, turns the hand palm up, questioning: has he figured out Mycroft’s house yet? He points back at both of them: that’s their job, since they haven’t actually got a Sorting Hat. He wishes the rest of what he’s got to say could be conveyed so easily.

He takes a deep breath. “He’s, well. He’s more than my friend. He’s my boyfriend.” No matter how tense he is for what comes next, it still feels good to say that. “I have a boyfriend.”

“What’s his name?” Betsy leans in closer.

“Is he there now?” Corrie shifts as though changing her angle will let her see more in his flat.

He blinks. “Mycroft, and no, he’s at work.”

Corrie’s in the middle of saying that’s a weird name but it’s better than Albus and there’s a boy in the class below hers whose name is Mandelbrot and that might be the worst when she stops, mid-sentence.

“So,” she says. “You’re…gay.”

He nods, slowly. “Yes.” He’s about to ask if she has any questions about what that means, because if she has questions, it’s definitely okay to ask, when she puts both arms on the edge of the desk, leans in close, her eyes narrowed.

“No one’s picking on you for that, are they?”

“Even a little bit,” Betsy says. “You can say.” She is so earnest.

Corrie’s chin jerks down decisively.

He thinks that if he starts laughing now he won’t stop until he’s crying. He tries to hold it together, thinks he does all right. “No,” he says. “No one’s bullying me.” No one who isn’t Sherlock, anyway, and he’s a whole other matter. “But—you don’t mind? You’ll meet him?”

The look they both give him—the exact same expression on two faces—might have been directly stolen from Sherlock, somehow, actually: the sheer, withering stupidity of his question. He’s waiting for Corrie to say _obvisly_.

“He’s nice to you?” Betsy points at him, just like Bob does.

“Yes,” he says. “Very.”

“Cool.”

And then they want to know if, when they’re there, they can go to the Reptile House at the London Zoo where Harry Potter talked to the snake.

***

Two days before the girls arrive, he comes home to his own front door already open, two workmen and his landlord in his living room. Everything is covered in plastic, and there is a long, sagging seam running the whole length of the hall.

“This is not happening.” Water drips slowly from the center of the living room ceiling, hits the plastic with a thin splat.

“Sorry, Greg,” Mr. Bhana says. “It’s a mess, but we got the water shut off before any of it started really running in here. Just a bit of damp.” Damp like bulging plaster.

One of the workmen says, “Poor woman upstairs, though.” He just whistles.

“I can’t—I have _guests_ coming.” It was hard enough getting Corrie and Elizabeth to consent to sharing a bed for the week, leaving the sofa for him. He’d been trying not to think about what sleeping on the sofa for a week is going to do to his back. They’ll likely try to convince him, too, to make it living room camping, piling mattress and pillows and blankets and everything where the coffee table usually is. But now—just. Fuck.

“You can stay in a hotel. Insurance will reimburse you, within reason. It shouldn’t be more than a week.”

He’s not putting his nieces up in a hotel for a week in the kind of place insurance will cover.

“I—nevermind.” If he stands here for two more minutes, he’s going to blow up, and it’s not Mr. Bhana’s fault. And even if it is, yelling at the man isn’t going to help, and it’s certainly not going to get him any sleep any sooner. Tomorrow’s his last day of work for nine days, and he has a lot of things he needs to get in order. After starting today at five, he’s planning to start tomorrow at six. It’s already well after nine.

While he’s packing a bag, he calls Mycroft, hopes he’s somewhere that he can pick up. If he doesn’t, he’ll have to try with Sherlock and John, and he’s pretty certain that’s the least restful place to spend a night anywhere.

Mycroft does answer. “Gregory. I thought you were—” He sounds happy. Lestrade is glad one of them is.

“Long story short, my flat’s fucked right now. Could I stay at yours tonight?” Tomorrow he’ll figure out what he’s going to do when the girls get there.

“Yes,” Mycroft says. “Certainly.” There’s a shuffling sound. “I’m afraid I’m engaged for a few more hours still, but there will be someone there to let you in. Treat it as though it’s your own.”

Lestrade thanks him, hangs up. He doesn’t say that what he’d like to do with his own flat, right now, is put his foot through the wall.

He’s on his way to getting a taxi when a car pulls up beside him. It’s Anthea. He ducks into the Triumph, wedges his overnight bag on his knees. “You’re a god-send.” He is tired all at once, probably from thinking about tomorrow.

She cocks an eyebrow at him. “Near enough to the mark,” she says. And then she’s quiet for the rest of the ride. She unlocks Mycroft’s door, turns on the lights. “I trust you know where everything is.”

“Yeah.” He hangs up his coat, tucks his boots behind the door. Wouldn’t do to have Mycroft come home to a mess. “Any guess at when he’ll be back?” He didn’t really explain himself very well, and maybe Mycroft will have a suggestion for the world’s fastest contractor. And holding onto him in bed tonight would be nice, particularly since it’s going to be a long time until he has even a little bit of a chance to do that again.

“When he’s finished.” She looks up from her Blackberry. “I wouldn’t wait up. You have a lot to manage tomorrow.”

And the door closes, and he’s alone.

He tucks himself into Mycroft’s bed, puts on the pyjama bottoms he’d worn the time he’d stayed before. He decides the best option is to go to sleep now so that when Mycroft comes home, he can wake up and talk to him a little. Hopefully. He feels completely destroyed, all at once.

That hour comes even later than he’d expected, on past two when the light comes on in the hallway. It’s the light that wakes him, not the sound, because Mycroft doesn’t make any noise as he walks. There’s only a soft whisper of cloth as he takes off his jacket, silhouetted by the faint light. Lestrade slits his eyes, watches as Mycroft undoes the buttons on his waistcoat, his shirt. His pale back is bared toward the bed for only a moment before he slips his pyjama top over his head. He leaves the room with the bottoms, and there’s the sound of water running. Lestrade blinks sleep out of his eyes, stretches.

Mycroft comes back into the room in total darkness, and Lestrade is happy to feel Mycroft’s hand light on his shoulder, slide across his chest, before Mycroft curls in behind him, not quite touching. He shifts back until they are, holds Mycroft’s arm across his ribs.

“Mmhi,” he says.

“I didn’t mean to wake you.” Mycroft’s chin settles on his shoulder. “What happened?”

“Was awake, sort of. Pipe burst. Flat’s out of commission for a few days.” A week. All week, likely. The thought wakes him up more, and opening his eyes properly lets them adjust a bit, enough to make out the windows, the dresser, the door. “Going to have to figure out where to put the girls.” He’s really down to about twenty-four hours for that. They’re flying overnight because their flights are coordinating with Marisol’s, so they’re not alone in the airport. He groans.

Mycroft kisses the back of his neck. “Go to sleep,” he says. “We’ll deal with it in the morning.” His fingertips stroke soothingly across Lestrade’s collarbone, and behind him, Mycroft’s hard against his backside, but there’s no hinting hitch, no expectant nudge. Mycroft just stays close, their bodies warming together.

Any other night, he’d be hoping for Mycroft to make a move, would likely be angling for it himself, but tonight, tomorrow weighs heavily. It’s already tomorrow. He rolls over, pushes Mycroft onto his back. He rests his head on Mycroft’s shoulder, edges one leg between Mycroft’s until there’s just contact, solid, steady contact between them both, ankle to groin to shoudler. Mycroft’s left arm crosses his back, his right shadowing Lestrade’s across his own middle. Mycroft kisses the top of his head.

“You’re doing this backwards,” Lestrade mumbles against Mycroft’s neck. They’re supposed to fuck a lot before this happens.

“Is that bad?” Mycroft’s fingertips are soft on his tattoo.

“Hn-nn,” Lestrade says, and he presses his lips slowly against his throat. Sleep is a thickening fog in his brain, but something else feels important. Thinking is hard, especially with Mycroft’s gentle petting. Tomorrow. Morning. “Y’said ‘we’.” _We’ll figure it out_.

“Yes,” Mycroft says. “Us. Now ssh.” The fingertip against his mouth. The hand on his shoulder.

He sleeps.

**Author's Note:**

> The piece Betsy was playing: [Aguila Cosmica](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNMOTyGRVoI&feature=BFa&list=PLE262A9C1455A6A88&lf=results_main)


End file.
